‘I’m a Psycho’—What ‘The Bear’ Says About the Work-Life Revolution

Are we what we do for a living?

It’s a central question of season two of “The Bear,” the critically acclaimed restaurant comedy-drama from FX currently streaming on Hulu. The Chicago-situated show chronicles a talented but dysfunctional kitchen, and if you’ve ever worked in one of those, you know the job can feel like a siege—noisy, claustrophobic, anxious, sleep-deprived, far too tolerant of antisocial behavior and almost always underpaid.

And yet, as with other crazed workplaces, there’s an allure. “The Bear” has a complicated affection for the period in one’s career, usually early on, when an occupation can be all-consuming. You love it, hate it, hate it some more, but can’t stop obsessing over it. Co-workers become family and enemies, sometimes both at once. The single-mindedness of professional advancement can incite cruelty: Anything that stands in the way is a distraction to be removed.

Late in season two, the show’s lead character, chef Carmy Berzatto ( Jeremy Allen White ) wonders out loud if he’s let too much of the outside world into his work life and if it’s cost him in terms of job performance.

“I’m a f—ing psycho,” he says. “That’s why I am good at what I do.”

That’s a lousy rationalization, too often an excuse for bad behavior. But I’ll bet you’ve heard it before. The staff of “The Bear”—who are trying to do the near-impossible by converting a lunchtime pit stop into a Michelin-starred restaurant—are at a point in their lives in which the lines are all blurred. They do not differentiate between who they are and what they do. Their jobs come home, invade relationships, inhabit dreams and nightmares.

It’s unhealthy, but they’re surrounded by co-workers going through the same torment. Work provides purpose—a conviction expressed early by Carmy’s friend, “Cousin” Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss Bachrach), a scruffy holdover from the sandwich shop struggling to find his place in the luxe eatery plans.

It’s jarring to watch the aggressive workaholism of “The Bear” amid the current reconsideration of work and work-life balance that’s been happening since the pandemic. Not a day passes without a new account of employees re-evaluating priorities; frustrated bosses urging staffers back to their offices; or social media phenomena like “quiet quitting” and “lazy girl jobs,” which really are rejections of wanton careerism. I’d argue that “The Bear” makes a sturdy case for the “culture-building” that managers lament is getting lost in remote work, but a restaurant doesn’t really have a choice. They can’t serve T-bone steaks over Zoom.

We are amid a radical shift. We used to venerate the work-obsessed: the star chef berating staff, the CEO texting at vampire hours, the thrice-divorced coach snoozing on an office cot on Christmas Eve. We gushed over office masseuses, foosball tables and cold-brew coffee spigots until we realized they were clever traps to keep people at work. In TV and film, the overworked protagonist was an archetype: How many shows has Hollywood cranked out about overcommitted doctors and detectives with bleak personal lives?

Balance matters. It’s no longer cool to brag about a merciless schedule. The suck-it-up “rise and grind” ethos, so prevalent on social media a few years ago, is now seen as corny. Work ethic still counts—a significant accomplishment almost always requires significant effort—but it’s hard to find anyone who wants to revive 80-hour workweeks, abusive bosses or skipping a child’s soccer game for a meeting.

“The Bear” nods at this detox, which has hit the restaurant industry as well. Carmy and his chef co-partner, Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri), rub a fist over their chests when they feel a tantrum coming on, a piece of sign language (“I’m sorry”) that Carmy picked up at a prior job. The real-life Chicago restaurateur Rick Bayless argued at a recent Wall Street Journal forum that “The Bear” has “pushed us back 20 years,” but I think the characters are eager to do the opposite—they want to break the cycle. The toxicity on “The Bear” is treated as toxic, not romanticized.

At the same time, everyone’s in. No one’s “quiet quitting.” “The Bear” soars when it depicts the chemistry of a frantic workplace with camaraderie and a common goal. There is no place these characters would rather be, no people they’d rather be with. (One of the most poignant moments is when Sydney stops what she’s doing to make a harried co-worker an omelet.) They have found purpose—even Cousin Richie, who, in the season’s best episode, apprentices at a sleek Michelin three-star restaurant and discovers a talent for customer service, not to mention an upgraded taste in clothing.

“I wear suits now,” Richie says upon his return. Casual Fridays be damned!

Even a non-chef can appreciate this vibe. “The Bear” made me nostalgic for a time, before the (delightful!) arrival of family and children, when I lived alone, kept a refrigerator barren but for a jar of mustard, existed in my own self-absorbed, work-crazed head, socializing only with other self-absorbed work crazies. The fact that “The Bear” soundtrack is mostly a furnace blast of mid-’80s and ’90s college rock (R.E.M., the Replacements,

Please know: I have zero interest in going back to my early days eating peanut M&Ms for dinner and getting marooned in the office on weekends. I was miserable and inefficient. Work-life balance has elevated my productivity and usefully checked my ego. My children definitely don’t care what I do—they just want to know if I’ll make them an omelet.

I don’t wear suits, either. I’m typing this in shorts.

If we are lucky, we find the sort of work that defines us—but only to a point. It’s what Carmy and Sydney have yet to locate and what Richie, a divorced father regaining his equilibrium, already knows. A great career can be a joyful expression of purpose and talent. A workplace can be inspirational, even amid pressure and chaos. But one’s work is not the whole of a life. Everyone on “The Bear” will eventually discover: There’s a lot more on the menu.